Selina placed her glass on the nightstand and pressed a light kiss to Elias' mouth, eliciting a groan from her bogeyman. She moved to the laptop on all fours, flipped it open, and started a horror movie.

"The Ring" was sure to freak her out and the perfect excuse to snuggle up to him. Seeking out the protection of the bogeyman's nightmares, she pressed her face into the warm skin of his chest whenever the tension became so unbearable she couldn't watch any longer.

Elias chuckled softly and buried his nose in her hair, basking in the taste and scent of her fear.

When the movie was done and Selina was a cowering mess, he wrapped her in his arms. "Are you alright, hazel eyes?"

"I think so. Damn, I hate that movie. Isn't it the worst?"

"The worst," he agreed and leaned down to kiss her deeply, sucking all that tension and agony from her body and mind, till the only tension that remained was the desire to get her hands on his cock.

She swallowed, sliding her hand cautiously into the swirls. The nightmares had let their guard down, revealing the clean skin of his face, neck, and delicious chest, but she still couldn't see any legs. From the waist down, Elias was a dark, dangerous mystery, floating in sneaky sashes.

He followed her gaze down and pinched her chin. "I'm still a bogeyman, Selina. That hasn't changed. You better take a look at what you're getting yourself into."

She stared to where her hand disappeared. The smoky snakes and ghosts that circled her wrist didn't scare her. They weren't what they appeared to be. They were Elias. "You're not going to hurt me."

With a pained expression, he took her hand out of his nightmares and placed it in her lap. "You're not afraid of me anymore. That's ... as much as I want to, it's not a good idea. I can't allow that."

"Why not? Is that against bogeyman-code or something?"

He shook his head. "It's how I ended up here. By not being afraid of the bogeyman. I can assure you that not being scared is hardly as healthy as you think. I wasn't scared of anything, but I am now."

"You wanna tell me?" She trailed her hand down his chest, looking for the solid parts of him. He shivered under her touch and breathed in sharply. She could tell he enjoyed it.

"How am I supposed to string two sentences together when you keep touching me like that?"

She let go off him reluctantly. "Alright, I hear you. I'll quietly sip my wine while you tell me how being fearless led to all this."

He inhaled deeply and for a moment she thought he would bow out and return to his cold bogeyman ways, but then he started talking, "I was sixteen. This was my girlfriend's room." He stroked the pillow tenderly, his gaze averted from Selina's while he reminisced, showing her a different side, his strong jawline and handsome cheekbones, but also his dreamily gaze and soft, gentle smile. "Her bedspread was laced with mint green and pink flowers. Her parents didn't allow me up here but that time, they were gone for the weekend and she invited me up. She had told me about the monster under her bed before, but I, stupid asshole, made fun of her."

His eyes glimmered with regret in the beam of moonlight. "That night, the bogeyman showed himself and I still wasn't scared. I rejected the idea. I couldn't believe he was real. It came to a fight. I don't remember the details. It was messed up and chaotic, but she was scared, and that thing, that monster started sucking her fear right out of her mouth and I ... I still wasn't scared. I was ... jealous. It pains me to say it. I know it's messed up. It's ... I ... You were right. "

He slumped to the headboard, his nightmares stripped from their bravado, their whirring energy gone.

Selina would never forget the haunting sadness of him.

After a short pause, he said, "You've always been right. I am a monster."

She wanted to take his hand but he rejected it. "Please," she said, "Please, tell me more. I don't understand."

"I jumped in between them, got caught up in their nightmares and the decadent pleasure of tasting them. I enjoyed it, Selina. Do you hear me? I wanted it." He buried his head in his paws, scratching himself with his claws.

Selina shifted on the bed nervously, afraid to press too hard but determined to not let this go. "Then what?"

"I'm not sure. It was blurry and dark. I was in a trance or something and I think eventually I passed out. From overeating? I don't know, but when I woke up, the bogeyman was gone and I had taken his place."

"What happened to your girlfriend?"

"She never returned to this room. A few weeks later, her parents cleared it out and I gathered from their conversations that she was in therapy and that they were moving out."

"What was her name?"

"Suzanne, Sue."

"I'm so sorry."

"Why should you be sorry? I'm the only one who should be sorry. I'm ... I've been denying this for all these years, but it is the truth. I am a monster."

"You were only sixteen, a kid. You couldn't have known."

"Sometimes I wonder how she is. If she ever got over it ... and my parents, my friends, ... how they coped? I don't even know what explanation anybody gave them. I've just been hiding here, too ashamed to show any of them what I've become."

"How long has it been? How many years is this ago?"

He showed Selina a hidden panel underneath the angled wall. Behind it was the soot-covered passage of the chimney and around it a hollow space, the place he was bound to. In the back panel, rows and rows of scratches grouped by five, tallied his stay in the attic room. "Twenty-four years," he said, "twenty-four long years."

"That means you're forty?" She studied his face. He could pass for a forty-year-old, a good-looking forty-year-old, definitely not a teenager. "So you still age? What makes you think you're immortal then?"

"I don't think I'm immortal. I can probably be killed by a great number of things. If applied right, maybe even with a fork, but I wasn't going to tell you that, now was I."

"You're telling me now."

"I suppose I am."

She understood the significance of his confession.

He trusted her. He surrendered to her ... and tonight, she would do the same. He was no more a monster than she was.

WC 1125 words
TWC 19298 words